Ode

Greek odes were originally poetic pieces performed with musical accompaniment. As time passed on, they gradually became known as personal lyrical compositions whether sung (with or without musical instruments) or merely recited (always with accompaniment). The primary instruments used were the aulos and the lyre (the latter was the most revered instrument to the ancient Greeks).

There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular. Pindaric odes follow the form and style of Pindar. Horatian odes follow conventions of Horace; the odes of Horace deliberately imitated the Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon. Irregular odes use rhyme, but not the three-part form of the Pindaric ode, nor the two- or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode. The ode is a lyric poem. It conveys exalted and inspired emotions. It is a lyric in an elaborate form, expressed in a language that is imaginative, dignified and sincere.

Structure

Pindaric Odes

Pindaric odes, also called Greek odes, follow the form and style of the Ancient Greek poet Pindar. These employ a tripartite structure, consisting of the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode.

In Ancient Greece, odes were typically performed on a stage to musical accompaniment. The chorus (or performers of the ode) would deliver the strophe from one side of the stage, then move to the opposite side to deliver the antistrophe, and finally to centerstage for the epode.

This reflects the three-part nature of the ode: the strophe sets up a theme, the antistrophe balances it with a contrary perspective, and the epode summarises.

Pindaric odes do not follow strict metrical conventions, meaning they are often irregular in their rhyme and line length. However, the strophe and antistrophe are typically identical in structure, with the epode varying the form.

William Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807) and Thomas Gray's The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode (1757) are both written in the Pindaric style.

Gray's The Bard: A Pindaric Ode (1757) is a Pindaric ode where the three-part structure is thrice repeated, yielding a longer poem of nine stanzas.

Horatian Odes

Horatian odes, sometimes called homostrophic odes, follow the conventions of the Roman poet Horace. Unlike the Pindaric ode, the Horatian ode is made up of any number of stanzas (usually quatrains) which all follow the same rhyme scheme and metre.

In contrast with the very formal panegyric style of many of Pindar's odes, Horatian odes often tackle more intimate subjects, such as love and friendship, and were not written for public performance.

Some of the most renowned Horatian odes were written by English Romantic poet John Keats, most famously Ode to a Nightingale (1819).

Irregular Odes

Irregular odes further break down the ode's formal conventions. They are sometimes called Cowleyan odes after the English Enlightenment poet Abraham Cowley, who revived the form in England with his publication of fifteen Pindarique Odes in 1656. Though this title derives from Pindar, it is a misunderstanding of the Pindaric ode on Cowley's part. In fact, Cowley's odes are very different from the strictly formal Pindaric ode.

In Cowley's poetry, the ode follows an iambic metre, but employs no regular rhyme or line length.

The 'pindarique' was employed by John Milton in the chorus of his lyrical tragedy, Samson Agonistes (1670/71). However, he corrects Cowley's misunderstanding of the form as Pindaric in his 'Preface':

"The measure of verse used in the chorus is of all sorts, called by the Greeks 'monostrophic', or rather 'apolelymenon', without regard had to strophe, antistrophe or epode, which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music, then used with the chorus that sung; not essential to the poem and therefore not material; or, being divided into stanzas or pauses, they may be called 'alloeostropha'."